Is Meerkat the next big communication revolution?

One of the great things about being in the communications field is watching the ground shift at fairly frequent intervals. What was “the next big thing” just a year ago in many cases gives way to something else before you start your Christmas shopping. It’s like hitting a moving target, with faster sharing and new apps always on the horizon.

The ground has shifted in the last three weeks with the launch of Meerkat.

New apps debut every day but few to as much fanfare as this new live streaming app. You've probably seen a myriad of articles in the last few days about Meerkat and thought it was just another flash in the pan. And it very well may be.

But since it launched just a little less than a month ago, it’s become the darling of the tech community. Not only are people buzzing about it, but they’re also using it. Third party apps are already springing up to support it. More importantly for Meerkat, they're raising cash.

Everyone can be a broadcaster

Meerkat is live broadcasting for the masses. The app lets you live stream from your mobile device inside your Twitter feed. Once you initiate a video recording through the Meerkat app, a tweet pops up on your Twitter feed containing a URL to the stream so your followers can watch your broadcast. The URL can then be retweeted like any other tweet, opening the door for your broadcast to go viral.

Viewers can comment and ask questions throughout the broadcast, making it much more interactive than just watching a video.

The stream isn't archived in the app itself, but the broadcaster can store it on his or her device and upload it to YouTube, Instagram, or another video sharing site. A few days ago an app called #katch popped up, allowing Meerkaters to automatically upload completed Meerkat broadcasts to YouTube.

Will Meerkat be different?

While the idea of live streaming from your mobile device isn't anything new, the simplicity of creating the broadcast and distributing it on a well-established platform like Twitter is Meerkat’s strength. They've made personal broadcasting kind of goof proof and easily shareable.

It’s tempting to wonder why you should care about this app. Certainly plenty of people will broadcast the mind-numbing details of their selfie focused life. But the uses for this kind of personal broadcasting are extraordinary.

Here are a few compelling uses in the mix so far:

Elections

While Congress can’t quickly pass meaningful legislation these days, a few politicians have already managed to latch on to Meerkat. Though not the first politician to Meerkat, Rand Paul broadcasted at the tech fest SXSW in Austin, where the infant Meerkat really got its legs. (By the way, that was just last week.) And Jeb Bush has already live streamed some speeches.

As the campaign circus gets fully underway, watch all the potential contenders start falling all over each other trying to look relevant with this app.

Conflicts, protests and armed rebellions

Twitter proved its worth as a major player in uprisings in Egypt, Ukraine and other hotspots around the world. Meerkat adds a real-time visual layer to this kind of information gathering. As events unfold around the world, we can watch them as they're happening (albeit with a 10-second delay built in by Meerkat). It’s a compelling way for real-time events to be tweeted in a visually compelling format. I'm guessing we won't be able to stop watching.

On scene reporting

Many reporters are now asked to be a one-person show on scene: camera operator, audio technician and reporter. Meerkat may simplify their job by allowing one-button access to getting “on air” as breaking news unfolds, getting eyeballs on their broadcast quickly. This BBC article has a good analysis of the media company’s thinking behind their use of Meerkat in the recent Ferguson protests:

Meerkat also provides more publishing options after the fact. News is all about content, and Meerkat provides an easy way to capture more content to convey a story from several angles.

Behind the scenes

Lord knows we don’t get enough information about celebrities. We are addicted to “as it’s happening,” and we are addicted to whatever it is celebrities do when they're not working, so this use should really take off.

Sports organizations can use Meerkat to provide engaging content at practices and during camps, or just to make quick announcements, like informal press conferences.

Education

The interactivity, timeliness and ease of use could be a strong application of Meerkat in an educational format. With the increase of social and mobile technologies in developing countries, Meerkat could bring education in all disciplines to remote corners of the world.

Innovating communication

No doubt the naysayers are going to pass Meerkat off as just another narcissist bucket waiting to be filled. And they may be right.

But if we've learned anything in our culture of extreme immediacy we know that the tools that help us do things quickly and easily tend to emerge as the big winners.

As adoption of Meerkat increases, it will be interesting to see how it solves real communication problems for real people.

Photo: The Meerkats at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla. are always interactive and engaging, as seen here on a family trip in 2009.